Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

It feels good to be back on RealityStudio. Is this mike on?

I can always tell I am feeling under the weather when I take out my copy of the Fuck You Press Despair and I feel no joy. If I become disinterested in my book collection, it is a signal that I am slipping into a mild depression. Further proof of a case of the blues is the fact that months ago I ordered a Burroughs item and lost track of it in the flow of daily life. One way I can jumpstart a spark into my mental and physical engines is by the act of unpacking my library. So recently I decided to clean and organize my bookshelf in order to manage the clutter in my head. And lo and behold, I found, still wrapped in the mailing packaging, that long forgotten Burroughs item.

“It is somewhat rumored that William S. Burroughs, el hombre invisible, will suddenly appear” is the type of Burroughs item that in better times gets my juices flowing. A single, fragile sheet of paper, with a degree of age-toning and some slight chipping, announcing a potential reading at City Lights Bookstore. The bookseller’s catalog description posited that the flyer was from 1962, but as the question mark behind the date demonstrated, this was pure speculation. As much as I wanted that date to be true, I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way the date was correct. The year was definitely later and, I suspected, much later. The questions concerning the date in no way put the kibosh on the sale; in fact this little literary puzzle was actually a selling point. It would be fun to research the item and reveal its mysteries.

But the hustle and bustle of everyday life intervened and the handbill just sat in my bookcase unopened. Until now. I have to admit that I had forgotten that I bought it. Looking at the package, I thought it was a Fuck You handbill, but I was pleasantly surprised to have the City Lights flyer in my hands as I was sitting Indian-style in front of my bookcase. Looking it over quickly confirmed my initial feeling that the attributed date was wrong. There seemed to be too much hype on the flyer. In 1962, even at a place like City Lights, most people would have no idea who Burroughs was. The rumors anticipating Burroughs’ arrival imply a word on the street, an interested general public, which just would not have existed in 1962. You could argue that the Grove Naked Lunch came out around this time, the Edinburgh Conference had just happened, and the interest in Burroughs was actually quite high. Good points, but this flyer suggested more than just interest. It suggested promotion, showmanship, an act. This air of the circus, the sideshow performance of “el hombre invisible” just did not exist in 1962.

I could narrow down the year rather quickly by going to Oliver Harris’s article, “The Frisco Kid He Never Returns: Naked Lunch and San Francisco” as well as some of my own research on Burroughs’ relationship with the San Francisco Renaissance, but I figured it would be much more fun to follow the clues on the flyer itself and see where they took me.

Saturday, November 4th. There are only a limited number of years in which this date and day could coincide. 1962 is not one of them. On one level, the internet is a wonderful and useful thing. There are date calculators that allow you to punch in the date and calculate the day of the week. Here is just one of the many options. November 4, 1962 was a Sunday. Further calculations reveal that 1961, 1967, 1972, and 1978 are other options for the year of the City Lights flyer.  

Going back to the handbill, which was quickly created on City Lights letterhead, the address for City Lights Bookstore is listed as 261 Columbus Avenue. That location has not changed since the bookstore’s founding in 1953. Everybody knows the location of City Lights, even if they do not stop in. On a recent episode of The Layover, Anthony Bourdain walked by the City Lights storefront and acknowledged its presence. This all the while bashing San Francisco’s other institutions like Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39, Alcatraz, and the cable car (with which Bourdain fell in love hook, line and sinker despite himself).  

In the late 1990s, I spent a fair amount of time in San Francisco working on a certain anti-trust case and, sadly, I was locked into the institutions, like Alcatraz. Dungeness crab at the Wharf, a dinner at Julius’ Castle, a drink at Vesuvio’s, dim sum in Chinatown. Typical tourist stuff. I walked around a lot but I do not know if I ever really saw San Francisco. I was excited to browse through City Lights and I spent a wonderful afternoon at the secret location of Skyline Books, but what in the hell was I thinking to never stop by Serendipity Books. In never visiting this Mecca, I violated the Sutton’s law of book collecting: If you want good books, go where the books are. With the death of Peter Howard and the closing of Serendipity, it is too late now, but back in the late 1990s, with the dot.com boom, it was something of the golden days of California bookselling. And I missed it.  

During that time, I did venture into the Serendipity booth at various New York City bookfairs. On one occasion (probably later), Howard brought an entire bookshelf of Olympia Press titles. Six to seven feet of green and white. It might have been every Olympia Press title ever published. By this time I was no longer completely green as a book collector myself. I had Burroughs’ Olympia titles, the Olympia magazines, and even an Olympia Press catalog but I was looking for more Olympia Press ephemera. I was advised to stop to talk to Mr. Howard — but warned to make it quick and to the point as he did not suffer fools gladly. I mustered up my courage and practiced my spiel a couple of times and walked up to Mr. Howard sitting in his booth. I think my voice cracked as I asked him in the most confusing manner possible, which made it impossible to understand just what I was looking for, the nature of my search. He turned full around in his chair and looked me in the eye and said, “No,” and turned around. In a weird way, I was elated, because as you know from American Pickers, collecting is all about “breaking the ice.” Things were definitely frosty but I felt that if I ever got myself into his store and demonstrated my genuine interest in his books, there would be an inevitable thaw. I never made it to Serendipity, which is my loss, not just in terms of the missed books, but in the experience of browsing the store itself, an institution as much as City Lights, and in meeting Mr. Howard again.  

The Bookstore and Reality TV

Speaking of American Pickers. This whole reality-show phenomenon around collecting is out of control. Antiques Roadshow, American Pickers, American Restoration, Storage Wars (California and Texas), Auction Hunters, the proliferation of pawn shows (Las Vegas, Detroit and I think I saw one in Cajun Country). I am sure there are more. In fact, a sports memorabilia dealer just started a show on Saturdays here in Baltimore. What strikes me about all these shows in just how few books are featured. Most of these TV personalities have no expertise and no interest in books or magazines. If they do come across them it is with hesitation and disgust. On Storage Wars, Darrell the Gambler came across some first editions and was genuinely befuddled (if not angered) by all the talk of condition and dust jackets when he asked a bookdealer about their value. Even my main man, Barry Weiss, got burned by an automotive racing magazine that he thought was the real McCoy at $2000. It was only a decoy and he threw it aside to collect oil drippings.  

I do not get it. I have always felt that a rare bookstore would be a no-brainer for a reality show. First and foremost the independent used / rare bookshop is a dying industry that feeds off a dying technology. The fetishization of a dying industry or technology seems to be at the heart of these collecting shows. American Pickers is a clear case in point. Mike and Frank are the sucker fish that circle around the whale carcass that is American industry and manufacturing. It is no surprise that their show popped up in the wake of the collapse of Detroit and the automotive industry. Their loving appreciation (and cashing in) of an old Ford rotting forgotten in the middle of a small Iowa farm (another dying industry) restores the aura to an automotive industry that has lost its luster.  

American Restoration works in the same way. Rick Dale restores classic Americana, like gas pumps, soda coolers, and other pieces that remind viewers of the days when the United States actually built things and the American economy revolved around manufactured objects. A fetish develops around that which is dying and these shows eulogize not only cars, Mom and Pop gas stations, and small-town Americana, but the once robust American economy as a whole. People have always collected, but it would not surprise me if the current craze — the fascination with collecting and the publication of guidebooks and manuals — began in the early 1970s, a time of economic and energy crisis.

The rare and used bookstore also speaks of a bygone era. As Jacques Derrida has written in Paper Machine and Archive Fever, a fetish for paper quickly developed with the predictions of the “death of print” in the wake of the digital age. In addition, the rare bookstore would obviously have the historical narrative angle present in most of these reality shows in that every book tells a story on multiple levels. The walk-in sellers provide an element of the face-to-face negotiation of Pawn Stars, as well as the appraisal elements of Antiques Roadshow. An on-location buy would highlight a book dealer’s quick instincts and immediate knowledge, like the shoot-from-the-hip assessments of Auction Hunters and Storage Wars. Then there is the atmosphere of the bookstore itself. From working at a used bookstore for two years, I can vouch for the fact that the owners, employees, and customers are all unusual characters to say the least. For example, Peter Howard’s gruff, no-shit persona is a reality show stock figure, think The Old Man from Pawn Stars.

There are opportunities for spin-offs. I have always thought a show around a working book scout would be interesting. Who would not want to see a show following Martin Stone around as he travels the world looking for rare books? This has elements of the rock star, gourmand, detective, spy, archeologist, global traveler, and astronaut of inner space. And what about record store guy, purveyor of vinyl? Who would not want to see a reality show with elements of High Fidelity, Ghost World, or Empire Records?

Interestingly, Pawn Stars has been revealed to be scripted. In fact much of reality TV has been shown to be rehearsed and staged. This digression on reality TV ties into the City Lights flyer. Like realityTV, public readings are live events, which promise authenticity and spontaneity. An opportunity to experience a writer out in the wild. Yet readings are heavily planned out and meticulously rehearsed. The magic of a Bukowski reading was that it seemed totally off the cuff, anything could happen from one moment to the next. Bukowski was unpredictable, dangerous. The Burroughs flyer implies a similar experience. Its slapdash design suggests that it was made in haste, on the spot. And it might have been, but it was for a planned event not a spontaneous one, despite the rumor that Burroughs will “suddenly appear.” If Burroughs’ appearance was truly spontaneous, there would be no flyer. 

William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights (photo from ferlinghettifilm.com)

Dating the Flyer

But back to the reality of City Lights in time and space. There might not be much to gather from the City Lights Bookstore address, but the phone number is interesting. The seven digit, all-numerical phone number was implemented across the United States in 1968. So 1967 is in doubt. The address for the City Lights Publishing House, 1562 Grant Avenue, narrows the possibilities even further. The book I wish I had when I was in San Francisco is Bill Morgan’s The Beat Generation in San Francisco. Along with Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac’s City, it is a great travel guide and an indispensible Beat history book all in one. I find myself coming back to these two books often when researching Beat addresses and landmarks. I suspect Morgan’s Beat Altas: A State by State Guide to the Beat Generation in America is essential as well. Morgan as the Beat Livy. Can Morgan’s account of the Beat conquest of the world be far behind? (The book I would really like to see would be Iain Sinclair’s account of walking through today’s Lower East Side. What he could do with the current landscape of the city with his intimate knowledge of this location’s secret history would be astounding.).

Morgan’s book on San Francisco was unavailable in 1999, but thankfully I can pull it down from the shelf now. Morgan writes

In 1978 the brothers retired, and City Lights moved in [to the central room upstairs] making the store twice as large and as interesting. At that time, Ferlinghetti and Nancy Peters moved the publishing branch back to the bookstore after a ten-year stay on upper Grant Avenue, setting up an editorial office in the basement where Ferlinghetti had worked in the fifties and sixties.

The brothers are Dick and Bob McBride, who ran the publishing arm of City Lights for years out of 1562 Grant Avenue. Morgan’s book also has a great entry on 1562 Grant Avenue, which states that the City Light publishing ventures moved there in 1967. Today there is a bronze plaque embedded on the corner of the sidewalk out front designating Poets’ Corner.  

Just down the street at 1546 Grant was the location of The Place, a bar opened by Black Mountain alums Knute Stiles and Leo Krikorian. San Francisco artists like Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo, and Robert LaVigne drank and showed work here. Bartender John Allen Ryan, a director at the Six Gallery, started Blabbermouth Night at The Place, an early poetry slam. While Jack Kerouac claims The Place as his own in Desolation Angels and The Dharma Bums, another Jack, Jack Spicer, was more into the spirit of The Place. 1546 Grant Avenue was the publishing headquarters for his J Magazine, with a submission box at the bar. Again Morgan’s book is indispensible for information like this, as is Killian and Ellingham’s Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance. A look through the Burroughs biographies confirms that Burroughs was nowhere near San Francisco in 1967 and as the phone number suggests there must be a later date for the letterhead. 

The 1972 date is interesting. Burroughs appeared in the October 26, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone with a piece on Scientology. It would be cool to think that Burroughs stopped in the offices of Rolling Stone to check in on the reception of his article, given that 1972 is something of a high-water mark in the publishing history of the magazine, if only for the work of Hunter S. Thompson in that period. Sadly it is not to be. Burroughs was trapped in London at this time, preparing his archives for sale, so he could finance his escape to New York.

That would leave 1978 as the probable date of the flyer, and a flip though a couple crucial texts confirms this date. Unfortunately, Ted Morgan’s and Barry Miles’ biographies are no help, but Victor Bockris‘ With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker is. I find quite a bit of useful information in Bockris’ book. It is chatty and gossipy, and thus a great source of what might seem to be useless information but sometimes turns out to be just the anecdote or factoid you need to fill out a story. Turns out Burroughs was in Hollywood in October 1978 visiting the set of Heartbeat, the movie account of the love affair between Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Carolyn Cassady. In the course of his trip, Burroughs meets Timothy Leary, Nick Nolte, Tom Forcade (of High Times), John Heard, Sissy Spacek, and Governor Jerry Brown. In talking with Gov. Brown, Burroughs discusses Henry Miller. Bockris’s book is useful like that. So when Bockris writes, “William flew up to San Francisco where he was interviewed by Raymond Foye in a punk rock newspaper called Search & Destroy,” I had the just detail I needed.

Time to place Bockris back on the shelf and pull out Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs 1960-1997. Foye’s interview, entitled “Call Me . . . Burroughs”, opens with a brief description that sets the context:

Burroughs was in town recently with his secretary, James Grauerholz, to give several readings. This interview was conducted in a bare storefront studio on upper Grant Avenue in North Beach. Mr. Burroughs was impeccably dressed in a glen plaid sportscoat, khaki trousers and crepe-soled shoes, his green-thick felt hat resting on the table . . . By the way, “El Hombre Invisible” no longer chain-smokes Senior Service cigarettes – a recent interest has been physical health.

The interview occurred in the publishing office listed on the flyer / City Lights letterhead. Interestingly the flyer might have been made rather “suddenly” and designed as the interview occurred. It makes some sense as the City Lights letterhead would be easily at hand at the publishing office. At the very least, Foye references the flyer in the introduction to the interview, as the flyer features a caricature of “el hombre invisible” smoking a cigarette, a habit Foye notes Burroughs had recently attempted to quit.  

The flyer has a definite punk-rock feel to it, which fits right in with a publication like Search & Destroy and the date. 1978 would also explain the element of hype emanating from the flyer. In early December, Burroughs would not so suddenly appear at The Nova Convention, a punk rock Be-In in New York City. The Nova Convention was full of rumors about special guests, such as Keith Richards, and the clamoring to get an audience with the Godfather of Punk was at a seemingly all-time high around this time. At The Nova Convention, Burroughs was clearly on display and putting on a show. By 1978, the circus, the sideshow around Burroughs was in full effect. The City Lights flyer speaks with the voice of the carny. Step right up and lay your money down. 

I suspect that Ferlinghetti “designed” the flyer. The magic marker holograph typography is a Ferlinghetti staple and, by 1978, had been for years. It is utilized on several Ferlinghetti publications, like Tyrannus Nix, or even earlier on Jack Kerouac’s Rimbaud broadside published by City Lights in 1960. If I wanted to be negative, I could throw in some thoughts about the use of City Lights letterhead as representative of Ferlinghetti’s business-like approach to Burroughs’ work. City Lights refused Naked Lunch in 1959 because it was not a prudent business decision, but Ferlinghetti was sure to cash in when the obscenity stakes were not so high and the financial payoff was higher. Yet even with The Yage Letters in 1963, Ferlighetti faltered. Ferlinghetti’s cool reception to Burroughs in the early years rules out 1961 or 1962 as a possible date. The financial payoff for a reading by a very controversial cult figure would not outweigh the potential bad publicity.  

I could also rail on about how this period marked the beginning of Burroughs’ career on the performance circuit and that readings were for him one of his primary business ventures. As Foye makes clear, Burroughs was in San Francisco on business and Burroughs was dressed in business attire — the attire that became his iconic look. Burroughs the literary industry did not exist in 1961 or 1962, but was in its nascent stages in 1978. But I have already said too much. Let me just say the Burroughs caricature is a nice touch and a cool reminder that, like Burroughs, Ferlinghetti had another career as a painter. In fact, Ferlinghetti began painting in 1948 in Paris. In 2010, an exhibition of his 60 years of painting showed in Rome.

It would seem to be mystery solved, but in today’s digital age, nothing is true, nothing is real unless it is on the internet. Or on RealityStudio. Oliver Harris’s article on Burroughs and San Francisco confirms that Burroughs did not set foot in the City by the Bay until the mid-1970s. So 1978 it is. Of course, I could have started my research on the internet, where information is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, but there is something to be said for printed matter as a vehicle for research. A true time machine. Get on the paper trail; you’ll never know where you might end up.  

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Quite a while back, a heartbroken bookseller offered me a copy of the Mad Motherfucker issue of Fuck You, a magazine of the Arts with the Couch cover for $35. Now realize the bookseller was distraught not crazy. When I received the mag in the mail, I could understand his disappointment. On first glance, it was like a giant zit on the Mona Lisa — the Warhol cover was ripped. In addition the once-tight frame had gone to seed, as the body of the magazine was de-stapled and incomplete. For example, the centerpiece of this issue, Auden’s “The Platonic Blow,” was missing. Still I happily paid the $35 for the Couch cover, which even torn was better than nothing. I could always upgrade, right? As it turned out, easier said than done. Fine copies of the issue with the cover attached have become prohibitively expensive, reaching ever higher into the lower four figures.

After I bought it, I scanned the covers and then packed the battered corpse into an archival coffin — where it lay until now. I was sitting this weekend in the pre-dawn, smoking and waiting for the sun to come up, when it came to me out of the fog: Why the hell haven’t I scanned the rest of the issue, warts and all? Reading as I scanned it, I am really glad I finally woke up. Like a fresh, young starlet turned barfly, glimpses of past glory flash from the opened face of the Mad Motherfucker despite years of abuse. The issue remains, even in this damaged and incomplete state, a truly magnificent example of mimeo publication. Over the years I have read quite a bit of Fuck You Press’ output, and I’ll be the first to admit it is equal parts good, bad and ugly. Nevertheless, above and beyond all else, what stands out are the paratexts: the editorial comments, the notes on contributors, the bibliographic asides, the glyph work and illustration. This stuff, the lifeblood of Fuck You Press, is pure Ed Sanders genius. So feed your head on this glorious mess of a magazine.

What is painfully obvious to me is that a complete reprint of Fuck You magazine is sorely needed. Clearly, the time is ripe. The Fuck You Press Archive has proven to be one of the top eyeball catchers on RealityStudio, second only to the Kurt Cobain / William Burroughs dossier. The publication of In Numbers and an upcoming MIT press book on artists’ magazines highlights the fact that interest is there and growing. I look forward to what seems to be an onslaught of critical work on little magazines and the Mimeo Revolution, but, let me tell you, reading about Fuck You is not enough. People need to get access to the magazine itself. Here is a taste. You’ll be hooked.  

On a complete reprint, the question remains: How to do it? The Internet is one option, an option that RealityStudio has fully explored with Jeff Nuttall’s My Own Mag, C Press’s Time, several of Charlie Plymell’s publications, and individual issues of a handful of important little magazines. I love this approach because of its populist nature. It is an open buffet for people to graze as they see fit. But I cannot help but wonder if the prestige of print would have shown My Own Mag, in particular, to greater effect. A hardcover edition forces critics and scholars to comment on its existence and get a discussion going, which personally I desire for this neglected masterwork. To me, it is one of the highpoints of William Burroughs’ career and, of course, the Mimeo Revolution generally. Why I don’t feel that it is enough simply to admire it, I have not fully gotten to the bottom of. But I feel compelled to push this intoxicating publication on everybody. For those who are not interested, in the words of Nancy Reagan, “Just say no,” but I can only say it will make you feel good.

So I wonder, even as we hear daily of the death of print, if hard copy is not the way to go for little magazine reprints. For me, the prototype for such a reprint is the Laurence McGilvery publication of Floating Bear from 1973: a full reprint, an introduction, a complete index of each issue, and footnotes full of information on the contributors and their contributions. Obviously, I would love to see this for Fuck You — Ted Berrigan’s C: A Journal of the Arts also comes immediately to mind as a little magazine desperately in need of a serious reprint — but I would cream my jeans to see a complete version of Jack Spicer’s J or, even better, Dan Saxon’s Le Metro and Les Deux Magots mimeos, as these magazines are close to impossible to assemble on the rare book market. This is not just a question of finances; they are, quite simply, not available. Single issues of these magazines are few and far between, and full runs just do not exist, even in institutions. An institution such NYU, Columbia, or the New York Public Library, just to name those in New York City, would have to step up and offer their magazines for scanning. Not an unreasonable request in my opinion and one that would bring attention to the library’s special collections and their educational value.

Let’s move on to the question of who would scan such rarities. A quick look through the news will tell you that public and university libraries are in deep trouble. They cannot adequately preserve their holdings let alone promote and utilize them. I do not know if the project would be profitable for a commercial publisher. There is always the university and academic press, but I would not mind going back to the Floating Bear reprint as a model. I would like to see a return of the rare bookseller as publisher. Once upon a time, booksellers did not just sell books; they printed them. The Wilentz Brothers’ 8th Street Bookshop and their Corinth Books are my favorite example with chapbooks by Leroi Jones, Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen, Frank O’Hara, and others. As the McGilvery Floating Bear shows, bookstores also printed reference books. For the past four or five years, I have heard rumblings from various booksellers about issuing a chapbook of some sort or another. Nothing has been released yet, but the interest is there.

What if NYU or UCONN gave Dan Gregory of Between the Covers access to a complete run of Fuck You to photograph? What if the institution or Sanders threw in mock-ups and stencils of the issues? Let’s go crazy and add correspondence related to the magazine’s day-to-day operations, distribution, and reception. Bear with me as I go even further: What if Ed Sanders wrote a lengthy introduction and provided bibliographic and biographic details on the contents and contributors of each issue? What if there were essays on all aspects of the magazine — the mimeograph machines used to print it; how the technology, the ink, and the paper all influenced the design of the magazine; behind-the-scenes information on certain iconic contributions, like Auden’s gobblefest or Nelson Barr’s flowery prose and poems. What if…? Well, shit, that would be one Mad Motherfucker of a publication and I would buy it in a second. I can dream, can’t I? But for now, there is RealityStudio and a quickie version of the Mad Motherfucker issue. Coitus interruptus, for sure, but at least you can get your tip wet and your appetite for more whetted.

Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts

Number 5, Volume 8

Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts #5 Volume 8
Cover

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Interior Cover

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Title Page

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Talk of the Town

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Talk of the Town

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “To Fuck Is To Love Again”

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “To Fuck Is To Love Again”

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “To Fuck Is To Love Again”

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “To Fuck Is To Love Again”

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “To Fuck Is To Love Again”

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Michael McClure, “Poisoned Wheat”

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Michael McClure, Letter to Ed Sanders

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Michael McClure, Cutout Cards

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Michael McClure, Cutout Cards

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Michael McClure, Cutout Cards

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Leroi Jones, “Words from the Right Wing”

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Leroi Jones, “Western Front”

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Ed Sanders, “From the Gobble Gang Poems”

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Ed Sanders, “From the Gobble Gang Poems”

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Ed Sanders, “From the Gobble Gang Poems”

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Ted Berrigan, “Four Sonnets from The Sonnets”

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Ted Berrigan, “Four Sonnets from The Sonnets”

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Ted Berrigan, “Four Sonnets from The Sonnets”

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Ted Berrigan, “Four Sonnets from The Sonnets”

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Ronnie Tavel, “Friends of Gerard Malanga”

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Vincent Ferrini, Poems

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Vincent Ferrini, Poems

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Vincent Ferrini, Poems

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Vincent Ferrini, Poems

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Vincent Ferrini, Poems

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Vincent Ferrini, Poems

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Vincent Ferrini, Poems

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Harry Fainlight, “Street”

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Gregory Corso, “At the Big A”

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Gregory Corso, “At the Big A”

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Claude Pélieu, “Four Shriek Pages from Liquidation of Stocks”

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Claude Pélieu, “Four Shriek Pages from Liquidation of Stocks”

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Claude Pélieu, “Four Shriek Pages from Liquidation of Stocks”

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Claude Pélieu, “Four Shriek Pages from Liquidation of Stocks”

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Al Fowler, Poem

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Al Fowler, Poem

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Al Fowler, Poem

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Elise Cowan, Poem

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Elise Cowan, Poem

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Elise Cowan, Poem

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John Keys, “The Relationships”

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Robert Kaye, Poem

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Robert Kaye, Poem

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Robert Kaye, Poem

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John Francis Putnam, “Mythology”

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John Francis Putnam, “Freebie Peek at Remaindered Girlie Mags” and “All Saints Day”

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Carol Berge, “Thank You”

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Carol Berge, “Thank You”

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Carol Berge, “Thank You”

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Bill Fritsch, Poem

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Al Katzman, “Directions I”

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Al Katzman, “The Bloodletting”

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Gerard Malanga, “In the Pores of His Forehead the Hairline Had Weakened”

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Gerard Malanga, “Some Thoughts on Jean Shrimpton”

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Gerard Malanga, “Charles Olson Amid the White Trees”

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Nancy Ellison, “That Which Comes into the World to Disturb Nothing Deserves Neither Respect Nor Patience”

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Nancy Ellison, “That Which Comes into the World to Disturb Nothing Deserves Neither Respect Nor Patience”

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Nelson Barr, “Guernica”

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Notes on Contributors

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Notes on Contributors

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The 1960s began in Britain exactly forty-five years ago on 11 June 1965. The International Poetry Incarnation at Royal Albert Hall featured Alexander Trocchi, Harry Fainlight, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Anselm Hollo, Simon Vinkenoog and host of others. The disembodied voice of William Burroughs via tape recording filtered through the hall as well. Here is the program for the event, which was handed out as one entered the hall, and a handbill announcing the reading. It was probably mimeo’d by Bob Cobbing at Better Books.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti read To Fuck Is To Love Again and brought down the house. Fuck You Press printed this poem in a standalone edition. Long Hair and Residu were two little magazines that captured the literary scene on display at Royal Albert Hall. Long Hair reflected the Better Books / Indica Bookshop community and was edited by Barry Miles. Residu was edited by Royal Albert Hall attendee Daniel Richter.

Program
International Poetry Incarnation at Royal Albert Hall
11 June 1965

Program
International Poetry Incarnation at Royal Albert Hall
11 June 1965

Handbill
International Poetry Incarnation at Royal Albert Hall
11 June 1965

Residue
Issue 1

Residue
Issue 2

Long Hair

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
To Fuck Is to Love Again

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

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Endpaper

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Claude Pelieu

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Mary Beach

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Claude Pelieu

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Jeff Nuttall

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Antonin Artaud

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William S. Burroughs

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Charles Plymell

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Roxie Powell

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Benjamin Peret

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Ed Sanders

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Bob Kaufman

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David Omer Bearden

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Leland S. Meyerzove

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Claude Pelieu

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Charles Plymell

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Mary Beach

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Norman O Mustill

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Back Cover

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

None of us obsessed with William Burroughs are fascinated by the same writer. Like the agent / addict’s face in Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, our impressions of Burroughs are constantly in flux. When I first fell under Burroughs’ spell, I wanted to learn everything I could about the events surrounding the composition of Naked Lunch. Burroughs was Naked Lunch. The key period was 1954-1959. Tangier, Dr. Dent, the Beat Hotel, Chicago Review and Big Table, the letters to Ginsberg. It was there that I focused my attention.  

As time goes on, I find myself re-reading the “Burroughs at Large” chapter in Ted Morgan’s Literary Outlaw. I want to learn more about Burroughs’ time in the Beat Hotel during the writing of Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded. The years that matter are now 1962-1966. Increasingly, it seems to me that this is Burroughs at the height of his powers. The creative output is considerable: The Ticket That Exploded, Dead Fingers Talk, Nova Express, APO-33, Time, the My Own Mag collaboration, the sound collages collected in Real English Tea Made Here, experimental films, the Third Mind project, countless little magazine appearances.  

It could be argued that this was also Burroughs at the height of his influence. For example, he helped launch a revival in science fiction. With Naked Lunch and the cut-up novels, Burroughs was understood to be at the forefront of experimental writing. He was featured in the Donald Allen and Robert Creeley New American Story anthology, which attempted to map the landscape of new fiction just as the New American Poetry anthology did for verse. In Tangier, Paris, and New York, literary scenes revolved around Burroughs. For example, during his time in New York City in 1964/1965, the New York avant-garde celebrated Burroughs for almost a year with parties, readings, and little magazine attention. Key Lower East Side players like Ted Berrigan and Ed Sanders incorporated Burroughs into their creative operations. Avant-garde film may have been the most vibrant art form of the 1960s, and films, like Towers Open Fire, placed Burroughs’ name and work in discussions on the topic. From 1962-1966, Burroughs’ presence was felt throughout the Western world in the realms of literature, art, and film.  

Maybe that is why I am so drawn to Burroughs’ little magazine appearances of this period. If I had to list my Mount Rushmore of little magazines, it would include: Semina (1957-1964), My Own Mag (1963-1966), Fuck You, a magazine of the arts (1962-1965), and Floating Bear (1962-1969). Semina is widely understood to be a work of art, but I consider the three mimeos on that level. They should be approached in the same manner as other artists’ books of the period. To me, My Own Mag is the most interesting thing Burroughs did in the 1960s. But I have lost all objectivity. I can no longer look at these magazines with a clear head and a steady eye. Handling them, my palms sweat, my head spins.

Take Bulletin from Nothing. How do I explain my strong feelings for something as seemingly irrelevant as a publication that maybe only a few hundred people read and that ran for two only issues? Let me try to explain myself.

Burroughs appears in both issues of Bulletin from Nothing. In the first issue, Burroughs contributes “Composite Text.” Issue two features “Palm Sunday Tape.” To be honest, these are not my favorite cut-ups from the period. The Dead Star, APO-33, and Time are not only longer and more complex but I think ultimately more successful. Maybe it is the merging of text and image in these cut-ups that appeal so strongly to me. I also like that Dead Star, APO-33 and Time have a central theme that Burroughs works on multiple levels. In all three cases, Burroughs detourns the very texts from which he is getting his material while challenging various forms of commercial and corporate media. “Composite Text” and “Palm Sunday Tape” are much more modest in form and content.

So my love of Bulletin from Nothing does not stem from Burroughs’ contributions to the magazine. Instead, its power comes from the company Burroughs keeps and the associations I make from the grouping. It is interesting to me that Burroughs appears with Charley Plymell, Claude Pélieu, Mary Beach, Norman O. Mustill, Jeff Nuttall, J.J. Lebel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Bob Kaufman. Bulletin from Nothing is a time capsule from San Francisco circa 1965. I cannot help but think of that famous shot of Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Welch, McClure, Brautigan, and others in front of City Lights taken by Larry Keenan (see the cover of City Lights Journal 3). Like that iconic photo, Bulletin from Nothing provides a snapshot of the scene around City Lights. Beach and Pélieu distributed many of their publications with the assistance of City Lights and were associated with the bookstore. Jan Herman, who was Ferlinghetti’s assistant in the late 1960s, told me that City Lights used a large Midwest offset printer (Edwards Bros.) for City Lights publications. Previously, City Lights sent their books, like Howl, to Villiers in England. The Edwards’ printing rep offered to produce all of Herman’s side projects through an industrial printer in Richmond,CA. That is how Herman got his Nova Broadcasts published. City Lights distributed the Nova Broadcast books. In the mid to the late 1960s, City Lights was one of the home bases for the San Francisco little magazine scene.

Plymell did the actual printing of Bulletin from Nothing on a large press at Ralph Ackerman’s shop on Mission Street in San Francisco. APO-33 (Beach Books) and So Who Owns Death TV (the first printing with the silver ink on black stock) were printed by Plymell. Plymell also printed Herman’s San Francisco Earthquake No. 1 on an offset machine. I have written about Plymell as a publisher before in discussing NOW, another incredible artifact of the San Francisco Scene of the mid-1960 and very similar to Bulletin from Nothing in content. By no means was Plymell a fine printer like Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press who came out of Dave Haselwood’s Auerhahn Press, but he does have a definite sense of graphic design that I find very appealling. NOW NOW NOW defintely stands out among SF little mags. Bulletin was not a mimeo job. Reproducing the collages was beyond the capability of mimeo. In fact, Plymell never printed on a mimeograph although he was a key publisher in the rather nebulous and ill-defined Mimeo Revolution.  

Bulletin from Nothing appeals to me as an object. I like that it is oversize, yet short and to the point. In contrast, I love the content of Black Mountain Review, but it is presented in a boring academic journal fashion. Most of my favorite magazines are 8 1/2 by 11 or larger (A-4 or legal). I dislike the professional look of perfect-bound magazines and prefer staples. The “bindings” of Fuck You, My Own Mag, or C are my favorite, even if they are completely impractical and unstable. Three quick hits on the left hand side with an industrial stapler. Stacks of sheets strewn all over an apartment or bookstore filled with cigarette and pot smoke. The community of collating parties. The staple binding of Bulletin from Nothing is more practical and creates a panorama effect. This is typical of Plymell’s magazine work. He has an affinity for offset and the fold. The page really opens out and spreads before you. Lots of space. This is great for open form poetry. I like big margins and blank space. Is anything more beautiful than the big pages of The Jargon Society’s Maximus Poems? Such pages give the feel of a canvas or a gallery wall which works for the collages featured in Bulletin from Nothing. Plus they are easy to scan.

Flipping through Bulletin from Nothing, the Chicago Review from the Spring of 1958 immediately comes to mind. In that issue, Burroughs was listed as a San Francisco Poet. At the time, Burroughs had never been to San Francisco and his work had nothing in common with Renaissance poets like Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, or William Everson. Like that game on Sesame Street, Burroughs was not like the others and he did not belong. He stood apart. Nobody was doing what he was doing. He was a freak. Yet in the pages of Bulletin from Nothing, Burroughs fits in. In less than a decade Burroughs had become a writer of reputation and influence. He was at the forefront of a style of writing and he had followers. Even if he was not there in person, Burroughs had made himself a home in the experimental literary scene in San Francisco.  

Yet the Bulletin from Nothing also takes me further back in time to Paris, New York and Berlin / Cologne immediately after World War I. Bulletin from Nothing wears its love of Dada on its sleeve and in its title. Dada is a nonsense word that in German means anything from hobbyhorse to nothing at all. Francis Picabia stated in 1915, “Dada signifies nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.” Over the years there have been several publications called “bulletin” such as the International Bulletin of Surrealism published in 1935, as well as the obscure, and close to my heart, Birmingham Bulletin that featured Burroughs’ “Unfinished Cigarette” in 1963. Yet the “bulletin” in question here might refer to two specific Dada publications. Bulletin D, an exhibition catalog as magazine was edited by Max Ernst. Bulletin from Nothing functions in a similar manner. Issue six of Dada was entitled Bulletin Dada. Pélieu and Beach’s magazine plays with that title. The collage cover provides a further reference to Bulletin from Nothing‘s Dada roots. The ransom note look comes from Dada collage and the roulette wheel references Duchamp’s Monte Carlo Bond from 1924, which was reprinted in the Christmas issue of Xxe Siècle in 1938.

I like Bulletin from Nothing because it provides material documentation of Burroughs’ ties to Dada. Cut-up practitioners like Pélieu were inspired by Burroughs but they were also cognizant of the cut-up’s origins in Dada. Burroughs and Gysin make these origins clear in their various manifestos and interviews on the cut-up. In fact, much of Burroughs’ work in the mid-1960s links back to Dada. Sound collages, scrapbooks, cut-up poems and texts all formed a major part of Dada art production. In 1958, Ginsberg and Corso met Tristan Tzara at the Deux Magots. Throughout his life, Ginsberg made an effort to meet his literary idols. He famously sat at Ezra Pound’s feet in Italy in the late 1960s thrusting the work of younger poets under the silent Pound’s nose and forcing him to listen to Dylan and the Beatles. Meeting Tzara at Deux Magots conjures up a host of literary allusions and connections. Dada, Lost Generation, Existentialists. Ginsberg would have been relished all of them. Burroughs and Ginsberg met up with Céline. Around the same time, Burroughs, Ginsberg and Corso met Duchamp and Man Ray. Lebel set up the meeting which was also attended by André Breton’s wife (Breton himself was sick). For Ginsberg, Duchamp was an legendary figure, like a movie star. Burroughs no doubt knew of Duchamp. Ian Sommerville had a homage (consciously or not is open for debate) to The Bicycle Wheel in his room at the Beat Hotel and the sculpture is featured in several photographs of the period. So the figure of Duchamp in a small sense was a ghost in the Hotel. At Lebel’s party, Ginsberg kissed Duchamp’s feet in a camp show of admiration and respect. In an act of Dada, Corso cut off Duchamp’s tie. Ginsberg encouraged Duchamp to bless Burroughs with a kiss. Duchamp obliged. It was a passing of the torch. Duchamp could be considered el hombre invisible of the Dada scene. Burroughs was the Beats’ Duchamp. Mysterious, fascinating, aloof, cerebral, scientific. Artist as chess master. Art Buchwald wrote up the event for the Herald Tribune. Unlike some people I consider the label Beat to be important. Burroughs is a Beat, but that does not mean I do not also consider him a member of other groupings. Burroughs’ presence in Bulletin from Nothing reminds me that Burroughs was a Neo-Dadaist as well.  

A crazed Burt Lancaster graces the cover of Bulletin from Nothing 2. This cover has a Pop Art feel. Taking the cover of issue one into consideration this is not surprising. In the early 1960s when coming to terms with the beginnings of Pop and struggling with how to place and define it, art critics called Pop, Neo-Dada. Artists like Warhol were viewed as warmed-over Duchamp. Interestingly Duchamp exploded back on the art scene in 1963 with his first retrospective showcased at the Pasadena Art Museum. Curated by Walter Hopps, this is one of the most famous and influential retrospectives of the twentieth century and a key moment in modern museum history. For a brief period in the early 1960s, Los Angeles made a play to become the center of American art. So it makes sense that Warhol’s big break came in Los Angeles in the summer of 1962. A one-man show at the Ferus Gallery, also put together by Hopps, featured a room full of Campbell’s Soup Cans. The show closed shortly after the death of Marilyn Monroe, which inspired the Pop Marilyns. Warhol’s transition from commercial artist to artistic genius was assured. He never looked back. The Hollywood glitz and glamour, the seediness of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, the sense of superficiality and the unreal. Los Angeles was tailor-made and ready for Warhol. Pélieu was interested in Pop so that influence is there in Bulletin.

If LA had the Ferus, SF had The Batman Gallery. Charles Plymell had a show of collages at the Batman in 1963. Wallace Berman was a key figure. He famously fled LA, that City of Degenerate Angels, to set up shop in San Francisco. Bulletin from Nothing has that junk art, mail art, assemblage feel to it, but whether it is there or not, I always see Fluxus when I turn its pages. Let me be clear, Fluxus had not arrived in SF by 1965, but like Pop, Fluxus was recycled Dada. Fluxus merged Man Ray with Marshall McLuhan. It took Dada into the electronic age and got it wired up. Unlike many people I love leftovers. In my artistic and literary tastes, I often find myself picking through the cultural refrigerator gnawing on last night’s turkey leg. Fluxus is much to my taste. I like its belatedness, its warmed-over quality. Stripped of the wide-eyed innocence that accompanies a new artistic or literary discovery, they are decadent movements, full of irony and self-knowledge. Yet in an effort to appear new, Fluxus artists have a frenetic energy and humor, which I find contagious. Like a gumbo that has been sitting around for a while, the flavors and themes get more pronounced. I would like to say more complex, but on the flipside, maybe they just get more obvious. More Cagean than Cage. More Duchampian than Duchamp. I cannot help but “get” Fluxus because it is so in-your-face. Fluxus has no shame.

Maybe that is not exactly true. For example, the cut-up has this same sense of belatedness. Gysin made a re-discovery, not a leap forward in artistic creation. Yet I have found Burroughs’ cut-up texts not just tough to read but tough to get my mind around. While most people highlight the cut-up’s ties to Dada, I have recently been interested in linking Burroughs and the cut-up to Fluxus and related groupings. In the pages of Bulletin from Nothing, Norman O. Mustill, Claude Pélieu, J.J. Lebel, and Mary Beach were all on the fringes of Fluxus, if not fellow travelers.

Burroughs’ connections to Fluxus, if you dig around, are definitely there. Paris in the mid-1960s is a good place to look. Emmett Williams provided the liner notes for Burroughs’ first spoken word LP, Call Me Burroughs. The album was produced at and recorded in the English Bookshop run by Gaît Frogé. Williams, a concrete poet, was a major force in Fluxus. Call Me Burroughs is pretty straightforward spoken word, but the sound collages Burroughs was creating at that time (1965) and that are collected in Real English Tea Made Here and elsewhere are truly Fluxus in spirit.  

Briefly in Paris, Burroughs was on the fringes of Fluxus. The link is clearly Brion Gysin. Gysin was a founding member of Domaine Poétique along with Williams, Bernard Heidsieck and Henri Chopin. This group paralleled and overlapped with Fluxus. As Barry Miles make clear, both groups were interested in “concrete poetry, electronic music, poésie sonore, machine poetry, happenings and performance art.” George Maciunas, the leading voice of Fluxus, was familiar with Gysin’s work and attended Gysin’s performances. Gysin and Ian Sommerville put on Happenings of their own that included sound recordings, slide projections, and readings. For a period in the 1960s the readings of Burroughs were in fact Happenings. His St. Valentine’s Day Reading of 1965 with its mixture of props, spoken word, and tape recordings is a good example. Burroughs’ artistic concerns of the 1960s were the same as Domaine Poétique and Fluxus and on occasion he entered their circle. On May 18, 21, and 22 at the Centre Americain des Artistes at 261 Blvd Raspail, the largest Domaine Poétique event occurred. Gysin, Francois Dufrene, Robert Filliou, Emmitt Williams, Bernard Heidsieck and others participated. Burroughs’ work was included in the performance. In 1965, Burroughs performed in a multimedia experiment with Brion Gysin at the ICA. Domain Poétique, the Lettrists, Fluxus. In the 1960s Burroughs was actively engaged in exploring the same creative terrain as these groups and in some cases he actively participated with them.

About a year ago I was able to buy the two-volume set of Colloque de Tanger published by Christian Bourgois in 1976. These volumes collected the texts from the conference held in September 1975 in Geneva. Unfortunately they are published in French so I cannot read them. There is precious little information in English on the Colloque de Tanger. It is not mentioned in the index of the two Burroughs biographies. It is briefly mentioned in Ports of Entry, but by and large it has been overlooked. The conference was a celebration of the collaboration of Burroughs and Gysin, and to me, it is far more interesting and important than the Nova Convention of 1978. On one level, I bought the collection because one volume is inscribed by Burroughs to bookseller Burt Britton. Yet the other is inscribed by Bernard Heidsieck to Dick Higgins and has proven over time to be far more interesting to me. Heidsieck, like Burroughs, was a man with familial links to wealth and privilege. You have probably had a sip of Piper Heidsieck champagne. Heidsieck was intoxicated by experimental art and literature and became an important figure in the European avant-garde, particularly in the area of sound poetry. Higgins was a major Fluxus figure who operated Something Else Press. The output of Something Else is impressive and his press is one of the finest of the Mimeo Revolution period from 1945-1980. Something Else published Brion Gysin in 1973, which featured texts by Burroughs. Jan Herman edited the volume. He was SEP’s chief editor at the time, having succeeded Emmett Williams. The presence of Burroughs in the Something Else backlist demonstrates Burroughs’ overlapping interests with Fluxus.

The publishing career of Jan Herman performs a similar service. San Francisco Earthquake and the Nova Broadcasts join Burroughs’ work with Fluxus directly. Wolf Vostell (Miss Vietnam) and Dick Higgins (A Book about Love and War and Death) appear in the Nova Broadcast Series, which also featured Burroughs’ The Dead Star. The Nova Broadcast imprint also published Alison Knowles’ The Journal of the Identical Lunch and Ferdinand Kriwet’s Publit. Nowhere is the Fluxus spirit of Burroughs’ work more clear than in the scarce Fifth Volume of SF Earthquake: VDRSVP. Burroughs appears alongside Fluxus artists’ Alison Knowles and Wolf Vostell. Yet more importantly this issue of the magazine epitomizes Fluxus’ interest in experimenting with mass media forms and turning them to creatively and politically radical ends. VDRSVP is a magazine in a poster format and thus does away with the codex. Burroughs contributed “The Moving Times.” Burroughs’ Third Mind experiments and his more advanced cut-up scrapbooks and newspaper pieces similarly challenged and detourned mass media material. The Dead Star is a case in point.  

The Colloque de Tanger celebrated these aspects of Burroughs’ creative career. Work that involved close collaboration with Gysin. Heidsieck signed my copy of Volume Two on page 161 in the middle of his recollection. On that page, Heidsieck circled a passage that mentions the Domaine Poétique events at the Centre Americain des Artistes at 261 Blvd Raspail from 1962. This is the very venue that Burroughs was a part of with Gysin. Higgins and Heidsieck shared an interest in sound poetry. Burroughs’ reading at this venue fits in here as well. The CD Real English Tea Made Here (recorded in the 1965-1966 timeframe) and Burroughs’ readings / Happenings highlight his interest in sound poetry and sound experiments. So even though I cannot read the volume or the inscription, both highlight for me Burroughs’ personal and creative relationship to Fluxus and related movements. An artistic involvement that gets lost in the shuffle, but is in fact a key aspect of what I find the most interesting and influential period of Burroughs’ career. 

 Bulletin from Nothing does the same thing. The two issues whisk you away to Paris, San Francisco, New York and Berlin ranging in time from just after World War I to the dawn of the Summer of Love. All the great little magazines are paper time machines that transport the reader backwards (and in some cases forwards) in time, throughout space, and across geographies. They function as very ports of entry and points of intersection that Burroughs sought to document and to create with his cut-ups. In each little magazine there is a different William Burroughs and maybe that is why I find him so fascinating. He is like a drop of mercury that refuses to be pinned down. Always one step beyond you, Burroughs eludes your attempts to grasp him. The quest to completely understand Burroughs and his work is doomed to failure but the resulting infinite possibilities, meanings, and applications reward you for the effort.  

Come explore Bulletin from Nothing for yourself. The complete run is now on RealityStudio including the elusive Bulletin from Nothing flyer sometimes described as Issue 3.  

Bulletin from Nothing Archive

Bulletin from Nothing 1 (view complete issue)
Front cover

Bulletin from Nothing 2 (view complete issue)
Front cover

Bulletin from Nothing Flyer (view complete issue)
Front Cover